Regal Assets Analytics

GEO Investing

When you think of individuals such Carl Icahn, Ronald O. Perelman and Nelson Peltz, you might think of their knack for business acumen, successful fund management and even philanthropy. However, there is one aspect of these personalities’ exploits that might get overshadowed by the overarching themes of their achievements – a specialty in turning businesses around.  

The reason it is a specialty is because not everyone has the means or frankly, the guts, to put plans in place to take a failing company and turn it around. 

Last week’s foray into the world of executives and portfolio managers at activist fund 180 Degree Capital Corp. (NASDAQ:TURN), Kevin Rendino (CEO) and Daniel Wolfe (President), touched on the reasons why companies consider and ultimately agree to shift the innards of their businesses around. In the end, it really comes down to making them attractive enough for investors to put their money into. We’d suggest that you catch up with that column after reading what we have lined up today.

So, speaking of turnaround specialists, we wanted to bring attention to a few famous ones who excelled at buying or taking a stake in underperforming or struggling companies to help them achieve profitability in various ways. 

We’ll touch upon notable investments made by the turnaround specialist investors above.

Having been through 3 bear and 2 bull markets, our history is rich.

We’ve accomplished quite a bit on both sides of the equation, recently experiencing the brighter side of things from March 23, 2020 (Covid trough) to January 3, 2022 before a microcap winter for many, including us.

During this period of nearly 21 months, we posted an average 134.96% rise in holdings that were initiated after December 31, 2016 and closed and/or still open by the time the bull market ended (a total of 67 unique model portfolio stocks).  Yes, while it’s true that the 2020 Covid bull run was a great outlier period when it was hard to lose money, we still managed to beat the S&P by 20%. Furthermore, the stats we highlight later will show that we had above-average returns well before this 2016 to 2021 timeframe. As an initial example, in each of the last 10 years going back to 2012 through the year 2021, we’ve logged at least 7 stocks per annum that have gone on to at least double during our holding period.

When 2022 came along, it created another challenging period for investors. Last year put into perspective just how unpredictable and frustrating investing can be, especially when you are dealing with a group of stocks that investors might tend to ignore or abandon, lending to thin trading and extended periods of price stagnation or decline. When some of 2021’s duds turned into 2022 duds, we knew we were in for a disappointing ride. But a little later, we’ll get into the strategies we are employing that are perfect for the next bull market, which we feel is right around the corner. Our goal is to even better the performance we logged in the prior bull markets.

It’s true. There are a lot of investors and hedge fund managers in the realm of microcap investing that have breathlessly echoed what we have been saying about the advantages of investing in the space for some time. We’ve also been saying that the selloff in many microcap stocks is overdone and it’s time to really pay attention to where the growth and value are.

Investment ideas don’t have to be screaming in your face at close range. Sometimes it is nuanced, which is why we are so keyed in on deeper research, be it by virtue of idea generation or education, and connecting with the content of peer analysis and discoveries outside the walls of GeoInvesting.

So, for the third week in a row, and on the heels of last week’s highlight video reel of our conversation with Vittorio Bertolini, we are focusing on another professional who publishes third party content – Seeking Alpha Contributor, The Institute for Innovative Development (IID), who endeavors to be:

“…an educational and business development catalyst for growth-oriented financial advisors and progressive financial services executives who are determined to grow their firms in a business environment of accelerating business and cultural change.”

As you might expect and as conveyed by its business model, IID’s columns are intended to be learning fodder for professionals interested in the perspectives of those in networking and business activities to find commonalities across a spectrum of next-generation investment instruments.

In concert with one of our favorite themes of highlighting compelling content from other investors, this week I have opted to bring you another investment thesis from a peer who also focuses on micro to small cap companies.  Last week, we shared a pitch from a hedge fund that is putting stake in a money services company that it believes is grossly undervalued and whose opportunities are misunderstood or discounted by investors who think foreign bank notes don’t have a bright post-Covid future.

So, after another bout of research from “around the web”, we found an intriguing pitch from a Seeking Alpha author who wrote on a dividend-paying microcap company that designs, manufactures, and sells recreational fiberglass powerboats for the sport boat, sport fishing, and jet boat markets worldwide.

While perusing through Twitter, I came across a tweet that highlighted an investment letter by a long/short hedge fund based in New York, which included their bullish thesis on a company, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the money service and payment businesses in the United States and Canada, with a general increase of those activities in some select foreign countries.”

A segment of the company’s operation deals with banknotes, which are “bills” or forms of currency that one party can use to pay another party.

What caught my attention was that hedge fund has a three year price target of $70 on the stock, and it’s currently selling at $18.69 with a P/E ratio of 10.5. We’ll get into the investment thesis in a second.

It’s not often that we seriously track companies that are in finance related industries, but when the stock came across our screener in June of 2022, we couldn’t help but do a little more investigating into the fundamentals that were improving, of which success is dependent on some predominant trends in the travel sector that deals with international currency and payments.

This January, our first Fireside Chat was with a nearly 100 yr-old company that takes a multi-channeled, technology enabled, approach to customer experience (CX), operating through three segments: Marketing Services, Customer Care, and Fulfillment & Logistics Services.

It’s not our first talk with a company involved in a part of that industry, who dealt with customer satisfaction and employee standard operating protocol management, which could be viewed as a subset of CX. We argued that in the post-Covid era there would be an increased need to put an emphasis on the way businesses understand their customers, and why it’s now more important than ever.

As the world sees it, there is plenty of room for CX to grow. A study conducted by Grand View Research determined that…

In light of the riskier market environment we are in, I have been writing to you about our new Recession Proof and Recession Resistant Model Portfolios. A great related next step is to dive deeper into the tunnel and focus on the topic of Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and how to profit by focusing on two buckets: 1)
Companies that survive a bankruptcy process. Will Muscle Pharm Corp (OTC:MSLPQ) be a candidate? 2) Companies whose businesses will actually benefit as bankruptcies increase.

We’ll be getting back to the normal Monthly GeoWire format next month, but we wanted to take this first edition of the new year to look back at everything we were up to in 2022. Don’t worry, we will be getting back to our normal video format starting in February. 

This month’s GeoWire will be split up into 2 issues –  one today, and the other next week. A lot happened in 2022, and we thought it was best to split it up into two separate posts to be able to put adequate focus on the themes we want to discuss.

This Week: The stock market and recession, our new Model Recession Portfolios, and still the chance to participate in our special offer for 2023.